Award-winning Broadway, Film and Television Producer
Nelle Nugent To Speak at Carnegie Mellon, April 8

PITTSBURGH—Nelle Nugent, producer and general manager of dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway hits, will be the inaugural lecturer of Carnegie Mellon University's Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series at 4:30 p.m., Friday, April 8 in the Philip Chosky Theatre in CMU's Purnell Center for the Arts. A reception will immediately follow the lecture.

Nugent's lecture, titled "Nobody knows anything ... including me!" is inspired by William Goldman's memoir "Adventures in the Screen Trade," and will use his premise as a launching point for her entertaining and enlightening discussion of her life and experiences as a producer of theater, film and television. Goldman's memoir is an intimate view of movie making and of the trials and rewards of working inside the entertainment industry.

The speaker series, endowed by Sylvia and David Steiner, features business leaders in the arts, culture and entertainment industries.

Nugent has won multiple awards for her work as a producer for theatre, film and television. Her impressive credits include some of Broadway's most successful shows, including such Tony Award winners and nominees as "Amadeus," "The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickleby," "The Dresser," "Home," "Mass Appeal," "The Gin Game," "The Glass Menagerie" and "Time Stands Still."

In 1976 with Elizabeth McCann, she formed McCann & Nugent Productions, Inc., a company that produced a number of these Tony Award winners and nominees. She started working in film and television in 1985 with the Walt Disney Company. A few years later she formed her own company — Foxboro Productions, Inc. — and in 1990 expanded it in a joint venture with Voyager Production, Inc. The expansion formed Foxboro Entertainment, which produced movies-for-television and independent films.

Nugent was a longtime board member of the American Women's Economic Development Corporation (AWED), a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching women business skills. She is the founding co-chair of the Producers Guild of America, East (2000-2002), and currently is co-chair of its Membership Committee and a member of its Advisory Board and Executive Committee. Nugent also is a longtime member of The Broadway League and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, where she serves as chair of the Subcommittee for Funding of the League's Education Committee Program.

David Steiner (CIT '51) is co-founder of Steiner Studios, which opened in November 2004 on a 15-acre site at the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard. The 305,000 square-foot Steiner Studios provides New York City with its first Hollywood-style (and scale) production and support facility. Designed to the specifications of producers and facility operators in Los Angeles, and supported by top New York artistic talent, Steiner Studios is a full-service, state-of-the-art "production factory," equipped for start-to-finish production of major motion pictures, independent films and television shows.